Sunday, January 27, 2013

Event 18 Recap

$1000 + $90 Six-Max No Limit Hold'em (Re-Entry)

A quality field is reduced to three players who wanted to play all night at the Borgata Winter Poker Open, but in the end it's Vimy Ha (Brooklyn, NY) who outlasted Tim Bryan (Centerville, PA) and Seth Berger (Woodbury, NY) for the $81,754 top prize and the trophy.

After playing three hours three-handed and three more hours heads up, Vimy won the title with Q-2 on the final hand.

"It was a good tournament and a great final table" said Ha, who is retail consultant and picked up the largest win of his career and first Borgata Event win ever.

The Day 2 marathon began with all 34 returning players in the money.

An early pivotal hand came when Brock Parker (Silver Spring, MD) doubled-up through Alex Rocha (29th) when both hit a set. Parker road the big stack to the final table, but a string of bad hands knocked him out in 4th place. Parker, the 2012 Borgata Fall Poker Open Champion, sent chips to Berger in a double-up and then lost back-to-back hands to Bryan to set up the three-handed merry-go-round of chips.

"I'm surprised it went that long," said Berger who was eliminated by Ha, "I was pretty card dead three-handed."

The $38,040 Berger earned was his largest career cash and will help the recent UCLA graduate with his aspirations of becoming a full time player.

The final table of seven players had Will Tonking (Flemington, NJ) going out in 7th place, followed by Kyle Frey (New Haven, CT) 6th and Troy Longo (North Haledon, NJ) 5th.

Many recognizable names claimed their spots on the pay sheet. Mike Linster (15th) continued his hot play with his 5th cash of the series, including two Borgata Winter Poker Open trophies for nearly $100,000 in the last week. Other familiar faces in the top 20 included: Jared Jaffee (9th), Steve Scales (10th), Matt Affleck (14th), John Dibella (18th) and Alex Queen (19th).

The tournament began with 344 entries who put up a total buy-in of $344,000. The final 36 players made the money -- including event 6 ($1000 NLH) winner Aaron Massey (32nd), Orson Young (34th) and Kevin Saul (35th).

But in the end it was Vimy Ha who used the deep stacks and one hour long levels to get his poker fix and win the event.